Techies are paying $700 a month for tiny bed ‘pods’ in downtown San Francisco::px-captcha
The USA is better than this. We should not be forcing people to live in tiny little dorms to work in our tech hubs due to housing costs. Build more apartments, fund it through corporate taxes and actually make San Francisco affordable for our brightest tech workers.
Tech workers shouldn’t be working from an onsite location unless they’re touching hardware…there shouldn’t be a central location they’re all at anyways.
I don’t know about shouldn’t. I think that there should always be the option to work remotely, but I much prefer to work in an office where I can have a separate mental space from home and be able to build meaningful relationships with my coworkers.
Ok but most of this can be solved by going to literally any co-working space.
And as far as getting to know coworkers–wouldn’t you rather pick your friends from people you can choose to be around?
Sorry, don’t take my spicy opinion personally. I think I’ve read too many dumbass return-to-office mandates that use stuff like your preference as leverage. Obviously, it’s not your fault they do that.
It’s not about picking friends. It’s about building trust and connection with the people you are already spending all this time with. It’s hard to tackle big challenges with people you barely know and don’t trust.
Co working space? No thanks. That’s like a motel versus a home. They’re dirty and noisy. Our employer keeps a great office space with everything we need and no coworking space can compare. It’s also a permanent space we know after years of working there. And I’ll bump into more distant coworkers there just by chance. With co working spaces you basically have to plan specific days to meet specific people somewhere, and it cuts down on serendipitous connection.
Working in a coworking space has all the problems of office working without any of the benefits.
I don’t need to be friends with my coworkers, but having non-scheduled interaction with them makes working with them much much easier. I worked on 3 different remote teams and I honestly don’t even think I could name most of my former coworkers, let alone recognize them.
While a co-working space would indeed help with having a separate work environment, I disagree that it would help with the social part of my problem with remote work. Not only do I feel far less like I am “part of a team” when I’m with a remote team, but often it leads to a lot of friction on collaboration in my own work. I’m quite headstrong and have trouble reaching out for help when I’m stuck with things, and part of addressing that is lowering the friction involved in getting help as much as possible. Idk, this is all anecdote and maybe isn’t as applicable if you’re not doing software development, but it’s what I’ve experienced.
My old company is a great example. They love to say collaboration and shit as a reason to be in office, but you need to ask your CO for permission to speak in office
I would love to see incentives to have people work from home in towns that need the population. I think a lot of people would like to live somewhere more rural if they didn’t have to commute… but we would need to fix public transportation if we did that. Otherwise we’re just adding more cars and miles.
I live rural, and wfh and have been for nearly a decade now. My cars get way less use than when I had to go into the office. Rural doesn’t mean more traveling and cars if you’re working from home.
I can’t see the locals in such places taking kindly to any formal program to move people there. We can say “these areas need population” but they will say “it’s driving up rents and they’re a bunch of city slicking tech bros and we hate them.”
The areas that truly, undeniably need population are so bombed-out that no one with any other options will live there.
Agreed.
Not everyone works well remote. I much prefer a hybrid model and honestly wouldn’t even consider working somewhere that’s 100% WFH. All that WFH does for me is decrease how much work I get done and make every waking moment in my home feel like work because I live in a 1 bedroom apartment.
Okay, then be somebody that goes in office?
That’s nice, rent a co-working space.
Hybrid working is completely useless if you’re not in the same space as your coworkers.
I get that some people don’t like working in person, but it’s much easier to get things done and to get short, off the cuff answers without sitting around blocked for 2 hours because nobody will take 2 minutes to answer a question.
Wouldn’t it be incredible if smaller tech companies spread out a bit? There are plenty of small towns in America that could use any form of industry to keep them alive.
There aren’t many skilled workers in those areas though, and you’d need a lot of money to convince people to move to a less desirable area just for you.
Part of the housing problem: https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o?si=zupttseljqhz07RO
This is just a shittier capsule hotel like they have in Japan. At least there they don’t charge you an arm and a leg for it.
Wikipedia article puts the pricing in Japan between 18 to 36 USD per night. That’s a range between 540 to 1080 USD per month. That makes San Francisco pricing average.
You can’t really compare a per night pricing to a per month pricing. Per month is always cheaper that per night but you loose the flexibility.
Anyway the price difference makes sense because SF housing is more expensive than Tokyo.
Ooh good call! I was misremembering the price!
They have much better standard, they have a door you can close, not just some curtains, the SF one is like a hostel.
Some have curtains in Japan as well.
I don’t dislike the idea of people living in dormitories, but with a price of $700 it seems that should have a full height room.
Can’t even stand up to get dressed in one of these
Removed by mod
Return to work is all about keeping money in the financial district.
Coffin Motels.
The term was coined in Neuromancer I believe.
Rather a converted van, cheaper and serves two purposes as can guarantee that $700 does not include parking.
Presumably part of the draw for living in downtown San Francisco is you don’t need to pay for the upkeep and feeding of a car
Yeah but it avoids the hassle of having your home impounded for being illegally parked.
So sad. I am also afraid that in the future those kinds of accommodations will be thriving with people even more squeezed. Dystopian future.
I swear I remember a location like this in one of the newer Deus Ex games, which take place in a cyberpunk ish dystopia
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen, the game’s protagonist, searches for a computer hacker named Van Brugen and finds him hiding out in a place called Alice Pods in Hengsha, which is essentially a “hotel” composed of coffin-like closable pods with beds in them. Each guest rents a pod and can make use of the on-site facilities. It was communal living on a shoestring budget (or in Van Brugen’s case, hiding from the Pharmaceutical Megacorp trying to assassinate you).
The funny part is that the fictional Alice Pods actually had more amenities than this real-life pod hotel does. They had washers and dryer units, private shower stalls and toilets, and even late-night food trucks in the common area serving up food.
A cyberpunk dystopia actually wasn’t dystopian enough to match reality.
Oh hellll to the no… somebody is making a fucking killing on these idiots though!!
Are they idiots or are they unable to find housing within budget? Not sure about their rental situation. In Toronto you find ads for half a bed that you have to share for $500cad
They are idiots for staying in an area with prices that high if they aren’t making enough money to make it financially feasible
What a lot of people do is work and live in SF as frugally as they can, save a few hundred thousand bucks, then move away
Wouldn’t be something I would go for but if people are going for this it sounds like hell of a way to get filthy rich and screw tenants. Investment opportunity?!? Do they pay a deposit I can steal as well??
$550 is the most I ever paid for a room there, but that was in 2000. My dad loves to talk about his $12 apartment on Sanchez back in 1965.
Techies?
